Sector Six, Crash Zone
Adrian Saunders
It was often said that plans never survived first contact with the enemy, but that planning was essential. Adrian had none of the first, and sweet fuck all of the second, but he did have a general sort of objective that might have been more useful with a little more time to think things through.
He hadn’t moved either, not since that focused cannonade of Zheron energy had annihilated the cloaking device and everything around it. It was an unfortunate fact that the V’Straki were a shitload more cunning than most aliens, and they’d clearly started responding to perceived threats with extreme aggression. Not surprising, but it certainly ruled out charging in with a frontal attack.
Right now he was stuck, knowing that they were ready for the slightest sign of something worth shooting at, and waiting for the reprieve of darkness and the oncoming storm, and hoping that the five who’d split off weren’t stalking the jungle in search of the poor, dumb-as-dog-shit human hiding between some fucking tree roots. All told, this encounter could have been going a lot better for him.
What now, Saunders? he asked himself, spying out as much of their little fortification as he dared. They’d cut apart some fallen trees and had shifted them into makeshift barricades that provided more ample cover from would-be attackers such as himself, but it now seemed that the soldiers had grown complacent behind their walls. Obviously they thought the two overhead drones, plus that weird CD-type thing, would be enough to warn them of unseen dangers.
Whatever they’d been expecting, it wasn’t the stone-tipped bolt that punched through their comrade’s face-plate and drove a spray of blood and brain out the other side; if Adrian had harboured any doubts about what it might be like to get hit by one of those things, they were all gone now.
The whole world seemed frozen as the corpse swayed in some bizarre dance of death, with the V’Straki too stunned to react to what they were seeing, but all eyes were on the dead man, and that finally left Adrian free to act.
He started by getting the fuck out of his hole and throwing a whirling blade towards the most obvious of the three flying objects: the silvery disc. With a year of hunting on his side, the thin strip of metal sliced a line across the disc and sent it careening into the jungle. It fell out of sight as a second bolt thundered from the jungle and planted itself, quivering, deep into the shoulder of the V’Straki commander.
The V’Straki stumbled and screamed, gripping at the shaft with one hand while his other hung as limp as overcooked spaghetti, and the half-drawn Zheron pistol fell away to the ground. If anyone had noticed the sudden loss of their drone, it was clear they had other things to think about; all remaining soldiers threw themselves into cover and began returning fire.
Adrian’s eye was on the Zheron pistol, now laying just out of reach of the fallen V’Straki commander, but he was gaining ground now that their attention was firmly turned in the direction of the assault. The sudden, gurgling scream of an Agwaren reminded him that, even with surprise on their side, the primitives had little chance against an organised push from the resistance. They didn’t know enough about the drones to see them as important, allowing the V’Straki to shoot with deadly accuracy without ever leaving cover themselves. Bolts tore past them, thudding into trees and flying off into the jungle while the V’Straki soldiers simply took their time. More screams served to underscore how badly the Agwarens needed some help.
Adrian took advantage of their distraction to sneak closer, now creeping up quietly on the fallen Commander and his pistol, a single throwing blade drawn in case he needed to beat a hasty withdrawal. He couldn’t have been two strides away when, either by sense or by luck, the commander turned to see Adrian making his final approach.
The creature gasped, moving its good hand from the bolt towards the fallen pistol nearby, but Adrian’s throwing blade was faster and sharper, and passed clean through the Saurian’s wrist before it could make the distance. It screamed again, then louder as Adrian stomped on the weapon.
“Guess it really is all in the fucking wrist!” he snarled as he snatched up the Zheron gun and raised it towards the series of extremely shocked V’Straki soldiers, giving the first no chance of escape.
The others sprang away, flipping up their visors to aim manually, but Adrian was already on the move and the Agwarens were not slow to seize an opportunity. A bolt smashed away the jaw of the first to break cover, pinning it to a tree while its owner stumbled around in shock and confusion that lasted only until a second bolt put an end to him.
Another took a bolt to the knee, flipping him around and sending him sprawling with a cry of agony. The others dropped low, crouching as they tried to maintain their cover and return fire both directions.
The rain began to fall.
Adrian’s fusion blade sizzled as it flared to life, and he flung it through the air as a lethal distraction towards the V’Straki defensive line. They scattered as it swept past them, one of them dropping as a Zheron double-tap seared a hole through its face and neck, and yet another falling victim to the barrage of opportunistic crossbow bolts. The last of them fled as the Agwarens thundered through the jungle and leapt the barricade, stomping down hard on the mortally wounded V’Straki they found there. Adrian fired after the fleeing enemy, missing narrowly as the soldier sprayed Zheron pulses at the oncoming Agwarens, and Aladyn narrowly avoided being one of those murdered by the deadly energy.
Adrian fired a parting shot directly into the fallen commander, but hesitated as crossbows rose in his direction.
“For fucks sake, Al!” he shouted. “Tell them to kill the fuckin’ star-birds, not me!”
“Let him go!” Aladyn roared at the other Agwarens. “He is not our enemy!”
Adrian started giving chase the moment the crossbows dipped, knowing there’d be no hope of finding the last V’Straki once the real rain arrived. It was just fortunate that the V’Straki, like all advanced races, were hampered by their own reliance on technology. They were a product of their environment, trained for a war against a technologically advanced enemy across many worlds, which produced a rather different set of skills than those possessed by Adrian. As part of the Australian Defence Force, he’d been trained for conflicts in the shittiest deserts, jungles, and bombed-out cities Earth had to offer. As totally fucked up as Agwar could get on a bad day, it still didn’t feel as dangerous as Earth.
Fuck, even an Agwaren huntsman could follow the trail the V’Straki was leaving behind, even if they were so big and lumbering that you could hear them coming from a mile away. Adrian, on the other hand, had come to know this jungle, and he saw what the V’Straki intended long before he laid eyes on the creature itself: one final ambush.
The V’Straki had taken the high ground atop a large, rocky outcrop, against which leaned the rotting remains of a particularly massive tree. He was crouched low, pressed against the tree for the additional cover it would provide, with his Zheron rifle slowly tracking across the direction he’d come from; clearly he was expecting to be followed.
Too bad for him that Adrian had already circled around—the sound of rain made it easier to move unheard—and was now closing the distance from the outcrop’s steeper embankment. He’d already learned that the range of Zheron energy sharply diminished in the rain, and he had to make sure it was done in one shot; the surrounding vegetation would provide little real cover from a Zheron rifle.
As if the weather somehow sensed how inconvenient it would be, the true deluge began, rendering Zheron weaponry almost completely useless.
With no chance to ascend the outcrop unseen, Adrian dropped low and slipped into hiding beneath the waist-high vegetation. He just needed to be patient; either the V’Straki would move, or the rain would ease, and Adrian would have another chance.
Perhaps due to the miserable rain, the V’Straki chose to move first. With gaze remaining firmly on the jungle it had been surveying, it carefully slipped down the steep embankment closest to Adrian, giving no indication that it suspected any threat from this direction. It passed him by, just a few feet away, and Adrian shot it in the back.
Stumbling forward with equal parts pain and surprise, it tripped and fell to the ground with limbs sprawled. Adrian stepped over it, grabbing the Zheron rifle away from its reach.
The wound bled freely, but it would not be fatal—even over that short distance, the rain had taken too much strength from the Zheron blast for that—and the V’Straki looked over its shoulder in raw terror. “Please do not!” it choked out.
Adrian finished it off swiftly, trying not to think about it. War makes monsters of men, but he wasn’t the one murdering whole villages here, and he wasn’t equipped for taking healthy prisoners, let alone injured ones. The ‘God of Strife’ had only one thing to offer his enemies.
He returned to the fortification with the rain still falling hard, and found the Agwarens had been busy with dragging their dead back towards the settlement. Only Aladyn and Dalon remained, hunkered down under the nearest large branch, their crossbows readied for the first sign of danger.
“Get it?” Aladyn asked as Adrian came into view.
Adrian nodded. “Yeah, how many you lose?”
“Six,” said Dalos, grimacing at the number. “We have destroyed the star-birds… they can no longer see us. That was how they knew where to shoot, was it not?”
“Yeah,” Adrian confirmed, and looked around in surprise. “All their weapons are still here.”
“It took an argument,” said Aladyn. “They saw the power of these weapons, as we did, so it was only natural to want them. But I remembered what you said about detecting star-weapons, and that these creatures were only a fraction of the enemy’s true power. Eventually they believed me.”
“Your plan seems to be in tatters,” Dalon noted.
Adrian shook his head. “Nah, there’ll be more on their way back at some point. I don’t think they’ll be killing any of us when they’ve heard what I’ve got to say.”
Dalon grunted. “That seems optimistic. Why would they let you live after this? Why would they let any of us live?”
“I know what they want,” said Adrian, “and I kind of know how they think. If you can make sure the village is safe, then I can manage these arseholes.”
“And if you die, we all die,” Dalon replied. “I do not love this plan, Adrian. Lacking a better one, however…”
“We will look after the village,” Aladyn finished, already starting to leave. “Good luck, Adrian.”
“You too, mate,” Adrian replied, and watched them leave. They were fully out of sight when he unclipped the commander’s communicator and activated it. “Is there anyone listening?”
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Sector Six, Crash Zone
Kama
“Who is this?” Skizer asked before Kama could stop him; the strange inflection was immediately familiar even over the communicator. “Where is Squad Leader Razen?”
“Having a lie down,” the voice said flatly; Kama recognised an allegory for ‘dead’ when he heard one, especially when it was what he’d expected anyway. Reconnecting with Oversight had taken less time than he’d hoped, and Jark had sent them straight back to find out what had happened to the rest of the Expedition.
Looking up at the expression on Kama’s face, Skizer finally understood what was going on. “You are the ‘Predator’!”
“Guess that makes you Arnie,” the creature replied drily, plainly making some obscure reference.
Maybe it was just that Kama was familiar with the creature’s strange way of speaking, since Skizer didn’t seem to pick up on it. “I am not ‘Arnie’!” he snapped, “I am Communications Technician Skizer, son of Kargh, and child of mighty Strak’kel! What do you want?”
“I am Adrian Saunders, son of Aaron,” the creature replied, “and right now I want to make a deal.”
Though they must have been listening to every word, Dastasji Oversight had remained silent, but this was the moment that Overseer Jark finally spoke. “A deal? You have repeatedly murdered V’Straki troops! If anything, you have declared war.”
“I am not the one butchering the natives,” Adrian replied coldly. “Am I speaking to the Shiplord?”
“I am Overseer Jark,” came the reply. “I speak on behalf of Shiplord Jrasic, and you will speak with me.”
There was a disturbingly long pause, and Kama wondered what the Predator… what Adrian Saunders was thinking. Overseer Jark was safe aboard the Dastasji, and would therefore speak more freely than was wise. Kama, on the other hand, was already within communications distance of Razen’s last known position, and was feeling much less brazen.
“You really have no idea who you are dealing with, Overseer Jark,” said Adrian Saunders. “You want the Artificial Intelligence destroyed, I understand that—we have a common enemy—but the natives are mine to protect, and maybe we can work together if you can just stop killing them.”
Jark hissed. “We may have considered this if—”
Adrian cut him off. “No, Jark, you are in the wrong here, and your presence is counter-productive. I am Shiplord of the Zhadersil, perhaps you have heard of it?”
“That… is not possible,” said Jark, clearly off-balance.
“Because I am not Xagh?” Adrian asked. “Xagh is long dead. The ship picked me as his replacement.”
“You are not even V’Straki!” Jark shot back; everyone knew that a ship could imprint a replacement Shiplord with everything he needed to get the job done, but it was hard-coded to scan for genetics.
“Technically,” Adrian replied, “I am.”
There was a long silence, and Kama guessed the Dastasji was deliberating over this sudden revelation. If this was true, then Adrian Saunders would actually outrank their own Shiplord, and the Dastasji would have been trying to kill a superior officer. Kama suddenly felt happy to be off the ship.
“That is a very bold claim,” said a new voice, and Kama instantly recognised it as Shiplord Jrasic himself.
“I am certain you can verify it aboard your ship,” Adrian replied. “No doubt you are interested in what else I can tell you as well.”
“Agreed,” growled Jrasic. “Expeditionaries”—Kama realised the Shiplord was now speaking directly to them instead—“you will rendezvous with Adrian Saunders and escort him back to the ground base.”
“Send a lander,” Adrian interjected. “I am not walking for days through the jungle for no reason. You have my coordinates.”
“We do,” Jrasic replied coldly; nobody spoke to him that way without regretting it. “Remain where you are.”
“Too easy,” Adrian declared. “And try not to do anything stupid, Shiplord, I would not want to destroy this planet ahead of schedule.”
That sounded remarkably like a threat, Kama thought, but the communication terminated before Adrian Saunders could elaborate. Not that he really needed to, everyone knew what had happened in space, and that continued anomalies prevented them from leaving. In just a single sentence, Adrian Saunders had tied all their lives to his own.
“What do we do now?” Skizer whispered.
“We follow our orders,” Kama said bleakly, “and we hope to survive them.”
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End of Chapter